he said, she said

christi and i went to our second of three engagement encounters meetings. it’s a marriage prep type class. this session dealt with conflict resolution and finances. the moderators joked that finances should come first and then conflict resolution because you might be fighting over finances.

we had to fill out a worksheet of expenses, debts, and the like. for me, it was pretty easy, i have no outstanding debt or credit cards to pay so i just put zeroes for most of the fields. for some of the fields like insurance payments, i had no idea what i pay since i only pay it upfront every 6 months. i guessed at what i pay for that sort of stuff.

we also filled out a worksheet about things that we think are necessities, niceties, and extravagances. they listed a bunch of items and we marked each of them as such. i think that christi and i agreed on almost everything there. i think we disagreed on air conditioning. i NEED air conditioning to survive.

we had to define what the difference between a necessity and a nicety is. i need air conditioning to live. i will die without it. but it is nice to have the fastest computer ever. i don’t need it, but it would be nice. an extravagance is to have fine china or crystal-ware.

after the session, christi and i talked about our finances and i think that i am far more conservative than she is so i tend to want to save a lot more money than she does. it isn’t so much that she doesn’t want to save money as much as it is that i am just uncomfortable with saving less money than i used to save before buying a house.

only one more session left. i wonder what the last session will be about. we’ve already talked about communication, conflict resolution, and finances. if i had to guess, i bet the last session is about family and children life. i wonder if there will be a religion session. these sessions are supposed to focus on topics for a successful marriage and being run by the church, one would imagine that there would be some kind of evangelism performed at some point.

it was about 11:30am on the morning of our second engagement encounter session… i was at work… in the middle of meeting that i was leading… and my mobile phone rang. the caller ID indicated that mike was calling me from his mobile phone. now, mike never calls me on my mobile phone during the work day — if he needs to get in touch with me, he IMs me or calls my office number. figuring that there was some sort of emergency, i naturally took the call.

him: so uhhh, you know the homework assignment that we were supposed to do? do you have the instructions? i left mine in the car.
me: no, you brought your booklet into your apartment. but i don’t have mine with me either because i left mine in my car. i think you’re just supposed to write me a love letter.
him: are you sure? there aren’t any specific instructions?
me: i dunno, i don’t remember.

so i guess he hadn’t gotten around to writing me a love letter — the homework assignment from our first engagement encounter session. whew, i guess i didn’t have to feel so bad about not having written his, yet, either!

the letter was actually quite easy to write. mike and i rarely utter those often-overused three words. however, we do often say “you love me”. once in awhile, it’s a reminder that no matter what challenges come our way, that we’re a team and we’ll tackle them together. but mostly it’s an acknowledgment that all the gestures of love — no matter how small or grand — are noticed and appreciated. but even though i don’t often tell him why or how much i love him, the words came easily once i put pen to paper.

the second of the three engagement encounter sessions covered two modules: conflict resolution and financial planning. truthfully, i don’t think we learned anything new about each other in this session. we address and resolve issues before they become problems, and the ways in which we each like to handle those sorts of things are identical to the other. and we’ve already had full disclosure about our finances, so there were no surprises there. and even the big gap that we thought we had about how much money to save each month was more of an issue of interpretation. to me, “saving” means actively transferring money from my paycheck into a money market or some other fund that doesn’t get touched. to mike, “saving” = not spending. at the end of the day, i think it’s all the same =P

oh, and if you were wondering, we haven’t exchanged love letters, yet. maybe we’ll save those for our wedding day and use those as our vows!